EP26: Amy Hoy sells her My Little Ponies

Episode description

Amy Hoy gives a personal interview on her growing up in suburban Maryland, programming on an Apple IIc, selling her My Little Ponies to buy a Power Mac, and how she ended up building her first products.

Highlights

“I started programming when I was 7 year old. At home we had an Apple IIc, and I wrote some programs in BASIC on that.”

“Programming books suck.”

“I grew up in suburban Maryland. It was a wasteland: the only place to get coffee was at a gas station, or one of those sub shops that don’t have a name.”

“Growing up, I didn’t have any business mentors. I was all alone. I learned from books.”

“I was always hustling trying to get money. To buy my Power Mac I sold all of my My Little Ponies.”

“My entire life, everyone told me I couldn’t do stuff.”

“I dropped out of high school in 9th grade and started freelancing.”

“Communicating and teaching are my #1 passions.”

“To me it’s really interesting how people hear about people, and start following people” – Justin

“Twistori ended up making us a lot of money.”

“Working for this startup was like living in Dilbert, but with lots more money and parties.”

Our premium sponsor is Sprint.ly. Sprint.ly is agile project management software with one goal: to help you ship more stuff. You can try them out for free at www.sprint.ly. You can also thank them on Twitter: @sprintly

Are you frustrated with your current web host provider? A few years ago I was looking to switch from my current cheap host to something more robust: but trying to search online for hosting providers is a nightmare (there’s so much spam in the search results). Then Rob Walling recommended WPengine. I’ve been with them ever since. If you’re looking for dedicated WordPress hosting, that can handle huge traffic spikes (like 40,000 visits in a day), is lightning fast, and has great support I highlight recommend them. Click here to get up to 2 months free.

Shout outs

Welcome to our shout-outs section. This is a chance for you to advertise your bootstrapped product, a job opportunity, or your side-project to our audience of product people, entrepreneurs, developers and designers.

Finally: Ting! For our USA listeners, if you go to productpeople.ting.com. Ting is a mobile service that gives you great rates, no overage penalties, and multiple devices on one plan. If you go to productpeople.ting.com you’ll get $25 off most Ting devices or $25 toward Ting service!

Want to be featured in this Shout Section? The cost starts at $39 per episode, and it’s a great way to reach thousands of people. To purchase a shout-out go to: productpeople.tv/shoutout

I'm building a new SaaS in 2018 with my buddy Jon Buda called Transistor.fm. Now, we're trying to figure out our pricing. We're trying not to pretend we know everything there is to know about running a SaaS.

Mike Taber (Bluetick) and Rob Walling (Drip) started MicroConf in 2011 as a conference for self-funded startups. It's gone from just over 100 attendees to nearly 500. It's become the place for bootstrappers to hang out.

Josh started out trying to build a "GitHub for music." When that idea didn't pan out, he still wanted to do something with Web Audio and WebRTC. So he started building Zencastr, which gives podcasters the ability to …

6 years ago, Bjorn Forsberg built an app called OrderlyPrint for Shopify. His goal was to increase his freedom, and to spend more time with his family. Was able to achieve it? (This is the 5th case study in the Mega …

Introducing a new series: Mega Profitable. What's the difference between a founder who is mega profitable, and a product person who's just making a living? Brennan Dunn joins me to talk about his journey.

Samuel has become the internet’s authority on user onboarding. In this personal and open interview, Samuel talks about how he was able to discover his niche, build an audience, and launch his first product. He also …

Brian Casel is a bootstrapper with a lot of projects: he has a podcast, a hosting platform called Restaurant Engine, and a new course called Productize.We talked about Brian’s story (from developing WordPress themes, to …

Mike Rohde is a designer and an author, but he’s probably best known for illustrating the 37signals books: Rework and Remote. Mike is now building his own products: The Sketchnote Handbook, and the Sketchnote Workbook. …

Marc-André Cournoyer is a passionate coder and product person from Montreal, Quebec. If you’re a developer, engineer, or technical person looking to make the jump to building products, you’re going to love this one.

Andreea Mihalcea is a dynamic young founder from Romania. Her and her team are building a new product called Startup Kit. I loved her insights into how and why people buy software products. Startup Kit is targeting an …

First, you need to know that Jarrod Drysdale is a good dude. He’s also the author of Bootstrapping Design, and the creator of Cascade.io. He’s smart, and humble, and talented and he has tons of great things to say about …

This week’s guest is Ryan Hoover. We’ve been online friends for a few years now. Back in 2013, Ryan invited me to join a new site he’d created called ProductHunt.com. In the last 3 weeks, it’s exploded. He was …

Dan Norris is the co-founder of WP Curve, and the author of The 7 Day Startup. He gave himself 1 year to build a profitable product. After spending a year on a product called Inform.ly, with no profits to show for it, …

Garrett Dimon is the founder of Sifter and author of Starting + Sustaining. We talked about finding an idea, validating an idea, and building your product. Our conversation started with this question: “What are the …

Brennan Dunn is the go-to guy to talk about marketing automation. He’s build a SaaS, called Planscope, but these days he recommends first-time entrepreneurs build something smaller (like an eBook, or a webinar). He’s …

Ok, so ages ago I interviewed Sean Fioritto, the author of Sketching with CSS. I like Sean a lot. He’s from Chicago, and he struggled for years trying to build products. Then he wrote this book, and it took off. You’ll …

This week you’ll hear from Patrick Mackenzie (Patio11 on the internet), an influential member of the self-funded, bootstrapping community, as well as a high profile member of Hacker News. Patrick is a great guest: he’s …

David Heinemeier Hansson started working with Jason Fried at 37signals about 14-15 years ago. 10 years ago, they created Basecamp, their first SaaS product. This past week they decided to stop using the 37signals brand, …

Alex Hillman is many things: first, he’s the king of JFDI (he even has the tattoo to prove it). Second: he’s the founder of IndyHall, a co-working space in Philadelphia. Third: he’s Amy Hoy’s partner in 30×500. And …

Amy Hoy is known for her unfiltered, straight-shooting opinions on building product businesses. Her and her husband Thomas Fuchs have built Freckle, an awesome time-tracking web app – and have become well known in the …

Jakub Linowski is a Toronto (Canada) based interface designer. He surprised everybody this year (including himself) by releasing a viral hit called GoodUI.org. In this interview we go behind the scenes, and try to …

If you’ve been making excuses as to why you can’t build your product, bootstrap your own business, or hire someone on oDesk? Well you need to listen to this episode because Ruben Gamez here to destroy all those …

In our last episode we talked about how David started working as a contractor for 37signals making $15 an hour. He eventually worked his way up, and became an owner in the company (along with Jason Fried). In this …

If you’ve dreamed about building your own product, you’re in the right place. This week the hilarious, talented, and honest Allan Branch joins us to talk about why he’s leaving LessConf behind to focus on LessAccounting.

This is part 2 of our interview with Noel Tock. He built a SaaS app on top of WordPress. In part 1 we talked about the thinking behind that, in part 2 we talk about the lessons he’s learned along the way.

Dan Martell discovered computers in rehab. After he overcame his problems with drugs, he taught himself to program. From there, he started building businesses. Eventually, he travelled to San Francisco to learn …

Dan Martell discovered computers in rehab. After he overcame his problems with drugs, he taught himself to program. From there, he started building businesses. Eventually, he travelled to San Francisco to learn …

Imagine this: you build a product that you’re passionate about. To demonstrate it’s capabilities, you create a demo that attracts the attention of the New York Times legal department; who promptly send you a cease and …

Hey, let me ask you a question: when you were a kid, after a game of Mario Brothers, did you ever take out a pencil and paper and try to draw your own video game levels? The idea of creating video games from a kid’s …

Hey Product People! What’s your process for finding an idea that people love? How do you take your initial hunch for an idea, and make it a reality? What is a funnel? Hiten Shah from Kissmetrics is back to answer these …

This week we have part 2 of our interview with John Saddington that literally sent warning bells blaring through the 8Bit office. We also hear about his new Kickstarter campaign: Pressgram (an iOS app that allows you …

Before this interview we thought John Saddington was a guy that built WordPress products with his team at 8Bit (we were also intrigued by his new Kickstarter campaign: Pressgram). What we didn’t realize is that John, at …

Jason Evanish has made a name for himself as a customer-focused entrepreneur. He caught the eye of Hiten Shah, the founder of KISSmetrics. Hiten asked Jason to leave Boston, and move to the Valley to become …

While in Boston, Jason Evanish made a name for himself as a customer-focused entrepreneur. He caught the eye of Hiten Shah, the founder of KISSmetrics. Hiten asked Jason to leave Boston, and move to the Valley to …

Nathan Barry is an amazing individual: when you spend time with him you can’t help but be inspired to create and launch your own stuff. As a young man he’s had tremendous success is releasing his own products: an iPad …

Kyle Fox is a real Renaissance man. Besides co-hosting this podcast, and working as a Product Manager at Granify, he also runs his own SaaS app on the side: FotoJournal. FotoJournal allows photographers to create a …

Have you ever wondered how much personal brand affects software sales? Check out this is great episode with Rob Walling. In our interview he reveals a ton of tactics for outsourcing your development on oDesk, finding a …

What are some good strategies for creating, pricing and selling an ebook? In Part 1 of our interview with Sacha we discuss what he learned launching his first book, and what he plans on doing next time. We also take a …

WordPress was first for pure blogging, then became embraced as a CMS (though some people still deny this), is seeing growth and innovation in being used as an application platform (I think we’re about a third of the way …